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Imperial College London's Partnership for Child Development have begun to expand its on and offline School Meals Planner enhancing the quality, quantity of school meals in Ghana's northern region - specifically, into disctricts in which partners, the World Food Programme (WFP) operate in.

To do this, PCD have been training WFP staff to use both the planner and handy measures - everyday items such as spoons and jugs which calibrate food quantities. Equipped with this new knowledge WFP are set to roll out training for disctrict level actors and caterers within their project districts, and they will also ensure caterers are fully equipped with the handy measure tools they need.

Read more: Innovative school meals planning tool expands reach in Ghana

After five months of Zanzibar’s Home Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programme implementation, preliminary results from a survey on its impact show that 

Read more: Zanzibar School Attendance Increases to 86% Following HGSF Launch

Various initiatives were identified to make school feeding efficient, nationally owned and sustainable throughout Mali at a learning event themed, the “Role of key stakeholders in the success and sustainability of school feeding in Mali”.

The event was hosted by Mali’s National School Feeding Centre (CNCS), with support from Imperial College London’s Partnership for Child Development (PCD) and Dutch development organisation SNV.

“The Government of Mali is strongly committed to promoting school feeding in order to face the challenges in education, health and nutrition for school-aged children,” said General Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Mr Souleymane Goundiam. He continued, “But, we must recognize that the national school feeding programme faces bottlenecks, especially given Mali’s recent political crisis, this workshop is therefore of particular importance.”

Read more: Malian Government Overcome HGSF Challenges

As part of an ongoing assessment of Mali’s Home Grown School Feeding programme, Imperial College London’s Partnership for Child Development and Mali’s Ministry of Agriculture are looking into how 52 rural cereal markets in Mali's Mopti and Kayes regions function and what their implications are on smallholder farmers and households.  

Using the study's data, recommendations can inform key policies to build the capacity of smallholder farmers, mainly concerning what are the best markets they can sell to, and what school feeding markets provide the best opportunities for them. 

Read more: Assessing the best markets for Malian farmers